While
numerous artists and a great variety of artworks passed freely
between eastern and western Asia, textiles seem to
have played an especially pivotal role in generating a decidedly
significant, innovative aesthetic in Ilkhanid Iran. Given
the importance of luxury textiles to the Mongols and their
evident presence in Iran, it is not surprising that textile
designs and motifs—such as dragons, phoenixes, peonies,
lotuses, and the use of landscape—are mirrored in so
many aspects of Ilkhanid art and architectural decoration.
Tiles, pottery, metalwork, and the arts of the book all reflect
to varying degrees the impact of textile art.

If textiles did have an important part in the formulation
of a new visual language in Iran, perhaps textile artists
and their techniques may have also played a role in the dissemination
of this language. Namely, the ascendancy of this medium may
have quite literally brought with it a paper trail. Cartoons,
drawings, or some form of graphic instructions almost certainly
would have been necessary to produce the complex textiles
preferred by the Mongols. Perhaps not coincidentally, it seems
likely that drawings first became an important tool for the
transmission and copying of compositions in Iran during the
Ilkhanid period. It is possible that the emergence of drawings
may have been initially connected with the new importance
of textiles and their specific method of manufacture, which
relied upon designs on paper.